Eddy Curry claims he slept for only two hours Sunday night because he couldn't stop thinking about ghosts roaming the hotel.

For years, guests staying at the Skirvin Hilton have reported ghost sightings and strange noises. Legend has it that sometime in the 1930s, a woman jumped to her death while holding her baby in her hands.

"They said it happened on the 10th floor and I'm the only one staying on the 10th floor," Curry said. "That's why I spent most of my time in (Nate Robinson's) room. I definitely believe there are ghosts in that hotel."

Assistant coach Herb Williams teased Jeffries and Curry for believing that the Skirvin is haunted, but Curry wasn't laughing.

"There are too many stories," Curry said. "Something is going on there."

As the hype around a U.F.O. sighting in Texas garners an unusual amount of attention, a local Air Force reserve base stepped up on Wednesday with a statement that either completely debunks the story or fuels it further, depending on whom you ask and when you ask them.

In the days since the reported sighting — which one witness said was of an object in the sky “bigger than a Wal-Mart,” with the addition of many, many strobe lights — officials at the airbase initially said that none of their aircraft were flying on the night in question.

But they changed their story on Wednesday: now they say that 10 F-16 fighter jets were indeed airborne between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. local time that night, on a training mission. That includes the 5-minute period when unidentified flying objects were sighted.

So is it time to say, “So much for aliens in Texas dairy country”?

Not if you ask The Associated Press, which published that line in an early version of its report before switching to a much more noncommittal lead paragraph.

One of the people expressing doubts about the F-16 explanation was Kenneth Cherry of the Mutual UFO Network, who asserted, “This supports our story that there was U.F.O. activity in that area.” He was apparently referring to one witness’s claim that the fighter jets were there to chase the U.F.O.

There are several others.

Video images that seem to show strange patterns of lights in the sky have surfaced on local television, but none have been deemed convincing by authorities whether they believe in aliens or not. A $5,000 reward for video proof has been offered by a Texas businessman.

The Dallas Morning News tries to answer an interesting question raised by the military’s announcement: Could 10 F-16’s, doing whatever they were doing, have been mistaken for something else?

In the article, which also runs down some alternate theories from an aviation expert that don’t pan out, the paper puts that question to Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing, which operates out of the airbase. Major Lewis’s door-slamming response will doubtless strike U.F.O. buffs as both unsurprising and revealing in its reticence:

“What we do down there falls under operational procedures that cannot be released because of operations security for our mission,” he said.

He also seemed to slam the door on the long-cherished hope Mr. Cherry expressed to The A.P.: “What we want is the government to admit there are U.F.O.’s.”

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower covered up a UFO sighting during World War II in an effort to prevent mass panic, a letter sent to the British government suggests.

The missive was one of thousands of documents related to the sighting of unidentified flying objects released by the United Kingdom's National Archives on Wednesday.

This is the second mass release of UFO-related documents this year, and the sixth since 2008. The latest collection spans from 1995 to 2003.

A letter sent in 1999 by an unnamed person from Leicester, England, relays a story he was told by his mother, which came from his grandfather, who claimed to have witnessed the alleged cover-up.

"It is claimed that my grandfather, [REDACTED] was present during a debate between Winston Churchill and Mr. Eisenhower during World War II involving making a decision about an unexpected incident," the letter states, dated Sept. 20, 1999.

The incident in question took place off the English coast and involved a Royal Air Force bomber crew, which was returning from a "photographic mission" in either Germany or France.

"The aircraft was intercepted by an object of unknown origin," the letter explains, "which matched course and speed with the aircraft for a time and then underwent an extremely rapid acceleration away."

Photos and/or film were supposedly captured of the object, which "hovered noiselessly" and seemed metallic.

The incident sparked a discussion between Churchill and General Eisenhower, presumably via telephone, who commanded the Allied forces during the later period of the war.

According to the letter, the grandfather who witnessed the conversation heard Churchill state: "This event should be immediately classified since it would create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one's belief in the Church."

The writer of the letter claims to not be a "crackpot," but explains that his interest is purely scientific, having heard the story for so many years.

According to the reply sent by the Ministry of Defense, which received the letter, documents relating to UFO are destroyed after five years when a threat to national security is not involved.

"Any 'UFO' report files from the WWII era would most probably have been destroyed," the reply letter, dated Sept. 30, 1999, states.

The massive collection of letters, all of which have had the names and addresses blacked out, include an array of stories of people who have spotted UFOs or claim to have come in contact with alien lifeforms.

One woman sent a hand-written letter in 1997 relating her experience with alien abduction, in which she details a list of aliens, and their locations around the world, which included "Stargate Aliens" in America, as well as spider people in Russia.

There are also letters relating to "Britain's Roswell," an incident that took place in 1980 in Rendlesham Forest, outside an RAF base, as well as several seeking to expose England's version of "Area 51," Rudloe Manor.